


'cause love's such an old-fashioned word

by autoclaves



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: (that's referring to crowley and freddie), Crowley is a Mess (Good Omens), Gen, Introspection, Pining, Platonic Male/Male Relationships, basically crowley and freddie become friends who bitch about love!, that's it that's literally the fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-08
Updated: 2019-08-08
Packaged: 2020-08-11 19:28:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20158849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/autoclaves/pseuds/autoclaves
Summary: The man in question laughs, as if he’s telling a funny joke, when in fact Crowley is deadly serious—he’d slept quite a few years after the Holy Water Debacle of 1967, as he likes to term it in his head, and has recently, upon waking, taken to steering the Bentley left instead of right on the last turn to Aziraphale’s Soho bookshop whenever he has the urge to drop by for a visit.This has the rather unfortunate consequence of making him a regular at this tiny seedy establishment a block away from where he really wants to be, but really, it is a justifiable action if you think about it—seedy nightclubs are the best place for a little bit of regular temptation, after all. Just enough to get his supervisors off his back, and then he’d start turning left on the intersection again.Nothing to do with how he felt stripped raw and bloody whenever he relieved that night in the Bentley; Aziraphale’s fingers warm on his in the glow from the neon streetlights, the aching gentleness with which he’d turned Crowley down.You go too fast for me, Crowley.





	'cause love's such an old-fashioned word

**Author's Note:**

> i see your aziraphale probably fucked oscar wilde and raise you: crowley probably fucked freddie mercury, except i wanted ineffable bastards feelings instead so crowley and freddie just end up becoming friends who bitch about things.

“Hello, handsome,” drawls a voice behind him, audible even over the din of the nightclub. “Where’ve you been all my life?”

“Oh, asleep for a few years, getting over a heartbreak, you know how it is,” Crowley says nonchalantly, whirling around to face the man who had spoken. Vaguely wonders if that pick-up line ever works (because really, what the fuck), and why he’s even bothering to start up a conversation. 

The man in question laughs, as if he’s telling a funny joke, when in fact Crowley is deadly serious—he’d slept quite a few years after the Holy Water Debacle of 1967, as he likes to term it in his head, and has recently, upon waking, taken to steering the Bentley left instead of right on the last turn to Aziraphale’s Soho bookshop whenever he has the urge to drop by for a visit. This has the rather unfortunate consequence of making him a regular at this tiny seedy establishment a block away from where he actually wants to be, but really, it is a perfectly justifiable action if you think about it. Seedy nightclubs are the best place for a little bit of regular temptation, after all. Just enough to get his supervisors off his back, and then he’d start turning left on that blessed intersection again. Nothing to do with how he felt stripped raw and bloody whenever he relieved that night in the Bentley; Aziraphale’s fingers fleeting on his in the glow of the neon streetlights, the aching gentleness with which he’d turned Crowley down.  _ You go too fast for me, Crowley. _

“Who’re you, then?” Crowley motions for the bartender. Nothing wrong with a little bit of recreational alcohol—it could kickstart a life of hopeless gluttony for whatever hapless soul he decides to tempt. “A drink for the gentleman, whatever he wants.”

The man in question gives him an appraising look, and orders. “Freddie Mercury. I sing for Queen, the rock band.” The end of the statement lilts up in a question.

Crowley shakes his head. “Nope,” he says, popping the  _ p _ . “Never heard of you, sorry.” Freddie’s wearing a hideously bright silk jacket, dark hair choppy around his face in bangs and a shoulder-length cut. He feels as though he’d surely remember this man, or whatever rock music his band played, if they’d ever crossed paths before.

“A Night at the Opera? Bohemian Rhapsody? We topped the charts for a while back.” Freddie’s eyebrows quirk up as Crowley opens his hands in a bemused  _ I don’t know _ gesture. “No? Well, you look like a man of taste, love, you must let me introduce to our music sometime.”

Oh, pretty  _ and  _ arrogant. Crowley thinks he likes this one. “You could take me home and do it now, darling.” He throws back the shot in front of him and lets it burn on the way down, doesn’t bother to start sobering up. He might as well do the human thing—rebounds, was it? Would a rebound still be one if the person you were rebounding from was, in fact, not a person at all and instead an ethereal being of indeterminate origin? Anyhow. Freddie doesn’t seem at all opposed, so Crowley pays the tab and they leave.

*

They don’t actually make it to Freddie’s house—“Flat, actually,” he says, making a graceful hand gesture as if to underline the point, “but my flatmate’s out of town to visit friends, so we’ll have it to ourselves”—or even really onto the road properly. As soon as they’re in the Bentley with the windows rolled up, Freddie leans over the stick shift and it just kind of—devolves from there.

This latest devolution ends up with Crowley lying across the backseat (there may have been a few miracles involved in getting him there in the first place), propped on his forearms over a very appreciative Freddie, who’s expressing the finer details of his appreciation with wandering hands and a grin.

He closes his eyes for a split second and then it’s not Freddie at all who’s beneath him, and something deep inside him, a place he didn’t think he still had,  _ hurts _ . He’s never wanted Aziraphale like this. He’d never even thought of it as a possibility—content to watch from afar and wait for the next accidental brush of their hands, the next friendly smile or embrace or tap on the shoulder. But now that he tries to imagine it, the yearning rears its head again and he feels like his insides have been split open from the force of it. 

Crowley knows he’ll never give voice to it, ever. He’d ruin Aziraphale with whatever this all-consuming burning is. He still remembers what it’s like to walk into hellfire; he still remembers the feeling of Falling.

(And as  blasé as he likes to be about the whole ordeal, it had hurt. It had felt like some essential part of him being ripped out from beneath his skin—he still feels its absence sometimes, like a small sharp wound between the shoulder blades—and that is how he knows that he can never love Aziraphale the way he deserves.)

He blinks open his eyes as Freddie’s skimming hands stop. “Something wrong?”

“No, no, not at all,  _ well _ , actually,” Crowley sighs, going through about thirty-seven different emotions in the span of three seconds. Is this what it’s like to be human? Utter bullshit. How do they even survive, feeling so much all the goddamn time? “I can’t do this. Sorry, Fred.”

“Still getting over that heartbreak, huh?” 

“Yeah, well. Would it be inappropriate and infuriating to say, it’s not you, it’s me?” Crowley (who, in fact, invented that turn of phrase and knows exactly how inappropriate and infuriating it can be) sits up properly. “Life’s a bastard.”

Freddie rolls out away, adjusts his jacket and shrugs gracefully. As gracefully as one can in this sort of situation, anyway. “Life’s a bastard to all of us. You should still come home with me and we can listen to lots of angry rock music.”

“Ehh.” Crowley frowns, weighing the pros and cons. Or, at least, pretends to weigh them, and then eventually realizes this—this, referring to both the act of weighing and the act of pretending to—is pointless because the cons very clearly far outnumber the pros. There’s of course only one thing a responsible occult entity can say in answer to a request this diabolic. “Can’t say no to that. But my place has better drinks.”

They go to Crowley’s. He miracles up a fully-stocked minibar, because he deserves some materialistic excess, and they do an irresponsible number of shots.

Freddie, as promised, plays Queen so loudly that the walls reverberate. He also provides an impromptu live show—despite both of them being roaringly drunk, it is a fantastic performance for all parties involved. 

So all in all, it’s an extremely good time. When Freddie staggers home at two in the morning after an excessively-drawn out goodbye involving karaoke, Crowley is almost sad to see him go.

*

It turns out that maybe the woman up above has realized she’s put him through a pretty hard time these last few years and is now a little bit more invested in granting his subconscious wishes, because he meets Freddie again only a couple months after that first encounter. As chance would have it, it’s late at night and Crowley is on his way to dangerous levels of intoxication. He’d begun the evening by avoiding the bookshop again—he isn’t quite sure how or why this translates to becoming wasted, but those two events seem to be happening in correlation a lot lately.

Freddie peels away from the group of people he’s talking to, and enthusiastically greets him. Crowley sort of, well, nods. He doesn’t really have the fine motor control for much more. 

They end up in Freddie’s flat this time for some reason, and Crowley doesn’t remember too much of what happened after that. He wakes up to too much sunlight hot on his face, finding himself sprawled on a cramped bed with an intimidating amount of clothes and papers and empty mugs towering over him on the nightstand. There’s a piano in the corner, a tiny brown spinet that’s right in his line of vision.

Freddie’s already awake, putting on pants with one hand and pulling a comb through his hair with the other. He waves from the other side of the room as Crowley makes to get up. “Oh, you’re up. Wasn’t ever expecting to see you again, by the way.”

“What happened last night?” Crowley glares at the sun streaming into the room, and a sudden breeze sends the blinds clattering shut. His sunglasses materialize discreetly on the side table next to him. The situation is blindsiding him; he’s usually the one gleefully providing details of horrifying events (horrifyingly embarrassing, that is—he draws the line at mortal danger or personal violations, etc; can’t have too many humans dying before their time is up, not on his watch) whenever people ask that.

Freddie makes a face. “Lots of things happened last night, darling, but probably not in the way you’re thinking.”

“Ngk,” Crowley says succinctly, holding his breath and miracling his hangover away using sheer force of will. When he exhales, his headache is gone and the corporation he’s in stops feeling like it’s going to drop dead. 

Freddie decides to take his lack of intelligent response as tacit permission to elaborate. “You were clearly out of it last night, no way you could have gotten back home on your own, but you refused a cab for some reason, you stupid wanker. So I dragged you back here and you sat on our couch dead-drunk and fell asleep. I had to carry you into the bedroom.” Freddie pauses. “You mumbled a lot about some fellow—Fell, was it? Ezra or Azir Fell?” 

Crowley groans. Heavens, this really was getting out of hand.

“Scared the  _ shit _ out of Roger, by the way—my flatmate—just sitting here in the dark acting like a madman. I take it this Fell man is your aforementioned ex-flame? The reason I haven’t been getting any looks at that?” He eyes Crowley’s general crotch area speculatively.

“I don’t put out until the third date.” Crowley waves a hand, and ignores the bit about Aziraphale. (He’s extremely good at that. He’s been ignoring  _ everything _ about his complicated feelings for the angel for close to six millennia and counting, now.)

Freddie smirks while pulling on a shirt. At the same time, he’s somehow pulling a random assortment of jewelry out of three different drawers. Crowley feels dazed by the sheer  _ presence _ this man has. “Good old-fashioned lover boy, aren’t you?”

“Trying to be.”  _ You go too fast for me, Crowley. _ “I like—doing things right, you know?” He abandons all efforts at getting up and slumps back onto Freddie’s pillows. It’s too early for this kind of heartbreak. 

Something of that must show in his expression, because Freddie stops his frantic multitasking and comes over, flopping onto the mattress next to where Crowley is now heading straight into a full-blown sulk. 

“Aw, don’t be like that, darling. Throw over that man and run away with me instead, we’ll have plenty of fun. I throw the best parties.” He squeezes Crowley’s shoulder in a comforting gesture, dark eyes glinting the half-light of the room.

Crowley says nothing. He sees the kiss coming, and he doesn’t do anything to stop it, but doesn’t reciprocate, either.

“Sorry,” he says quietly once it’s over, nothing more serious than a chaste press of the lips. It’s a shadow of their first encounter. He’s horrified to find himself near tears, something that’s never happened in this body before. He thinks about the soft light of Aziraphale’s aura and finds himself aching in ways he hadn’t thought it was possible to ache.

Freddie pulls away slightly with a sigh. “I know, I just thought—maybe, you know?”

They lay in silence for a while, watching the shadows drift across the ceiling and form patterns on the walls. Crowley wants, and tries not to think about wanting.

“Did he treat you well, your other man?” Freddie asks softly, still looking up at the ceiling. “He really did a number on you, didn’t he?”

“He said I went too fast for him,” Crowley says. His hands fidget. 

Freddie makes a sympathetic noise. “In denial? I’ve met that sort.”

“Of a sort.” He pauses. “But he’s a good person. He deserves someone—someone who’s not like me.”

“We can’t help who we love. And sometimes the best we can hope for, the only thing we can hope for, is that the person we love will love us back.”

“Are you in love, then, Freddie?”

“Maybe someday,” Freddie says with a lazy wink, but there’s a note of wistfulness in his voice. He jumps up, a bit of the frenetic energy from earlier returning. “Anyway! I have to go now, my bandmates will have my head if I don’t show up to practice. Let yourself out whenever you’re ready to stop lounging around like that.”

“Oh dear, can’t keep the band waiting,” Crowley mocks from the bed, but only half-heartedly. He stretches out, languid, and ducks from the sizable high-heeled shoe that Freddie throws at him.

“Keep an ear out for us on the radio!” Freddie blows him a kiss, the patterned light in the room throwing shadows on the wall behind him that almost look like wings. “Maybe I’ll write a song for you, Anthony Crowley.”

*

A year and a half later, Queen releases their third studio album, A Day at the Races. The hit single of the album is called Somebody to Love, and Crowley listens to it remembering a conversation about love in a lumpy bed one sunlit morning. 

_ Find me somebody to love (love, love), find me somebody.  _ He hears the desperate strain in Freddie Mercury’s voice and recognizes it for what it is—a longing to be seen, be heard, be loved in spite of everything it means. Crowley is a demon, keeps his head down and pays minimal attention to the everyday politics of humanity, but he hears the slurs they call Freddie in the papers; knows it isn’t easy for people like them for whom love is an act of revolution. He understands, he thinks. Not the specifics, of course, but Crowley knows a little about love against all circumstance. Against all reason.

He drives to the bookshop that day and Aziraphale throws open the door with something like relief on his face, putters around nervously as Crowley slouches into his usual armchair (still in place, impeccably clean, as if it had been dusted every so often) and scolds him for leaving like that without so much as a message. Then Aziraphale makes him coffee while pointedly going on about the benefits of tea in great detail; they bicker while the kettle whistles, and it feels like he’s never left. 

Crowley leaves wine and Plato and a first-edition Wilde by the door as he sees himself out later that night—details of a confession he dare not speak out loud, disguised as an apology. Aziraphale will find it in the morning.

*

There’s also a lesser-known single on that same album, cheekily titled Good-Old Fashioned Lover Boy; it looks like Freddie had kept his promise after all. 

Crowley doesn’t listen to it as much, except when he’s driving to Aziraphale’s and feeling sentimental, which is, to be perfectly candid, quite a lot of the time. By now, the Bentley knows to stop whatever it’s playing and turn on Queen instead whenever Crowley heads to Soho.

*

In 1985, nine years and six albums and more than a handful of chance ( _ chance _ in the loosest sense of the word, of course) meetings later, he goes to Live Aid to see Queen perform. On the way to his seat, Crowley stops by the sound booth and sends a vague thought of temptation to one of the managers, who promptly responds by maxing out the speaker volumes. No big deal; it’s all about the discomfort it would cause to the audience, not to mention the long-lasting minor health issues.

Nothing to do with gratitude and debts owed and all that. That would be unbecoming for a demon of his position.

And if the resulting performance is absolutely glorious, well. An unexpected side effect. All due credit to the band.

*

He keeps in touch throughout Freddie’s illness, tries to do what he can to help when the end is inevitable. Crowley isn’t used to being the caretaker; he’d thought he wouldn’t be capable of it, but fifteen years around Freddie Mercury has taught him a lot about becoming more than what one’s nature dictates.

“Hey, handsome, where’ve you been all my life?” jokes Freddie as Crowley enters, closing the door behind him. 

“Oh, not those lines again, Freddie. Are the rest of you lot here?”

“Just me and Jim today. I think Roger’s on his way round, though.” Freddie smiles, and it’s a pale mimic of the glee he used to laugh with. “Crowley, dear, what’re you doing here?”

“Can’t I visit an old friend?” Crowley sits down in the chair pulled up by the bedside, folds his spindly limbs into it and takes Freddie’s hand. There’s a ring on the fourth finger. Crowley studies it for a moment.

“Looks like you found love after all.”

“Looks like I did,” Freddie’s face softens as he looks down at the ring himself. “I’d marry him if it were legal, but oh, well.”

Crowley feels a pang of sadness. All these years and the laws still haven’t changed. He vows to bother someone lower down about it on his next visit to the office. “It’ll be legal someday. I promise.” 

“I hope you live to see it, at least. One of us has to.” Freddie must see how his face falls, because he snaps his fingers and quickly changes the subject. “Enough about me. How is your mysterious Mr. Fell?”

“Fine. Good,” he says. And indeed, it’s been good. They go out to lunch every week, and dinner every other. Sometimes they’ll have a nightcap at the bookshop flat or throw bread to the ducks in the park. Crowley is learning how to keep the wanting at bay, how to have as much of Aziraphale as he’s willing to give and keep his distance otherwise—it’s a balancing act, but then again, he was never made to love in pieces like this.

“Ever the romantic.” Freddie squeezes his hand. “Take care of yourself. And your heart, too.”

“I’m a demon, Freddie, I don’t have a heart.”

“Oh, bullshit,” Freddie says airily, sounding so much like the self he’d been before the illness had taken over that Crowley breaks a little inside—treacherously proving his own statement of heartlessness wrong. “This demon joke is getting old, really, and of course you have a heart. You’re a good person, Anthony Crowley. You save people.”

“Oh, now that’s going a little overboard—”

“You’d be more than good enough for anybody who wants you. And I bet he thinks that, too.” Freddie drowns out Crowley’s protest with a question. “How long have you two known each other again? Remind me.”

“Since the beginning,” Crowley says, thinking of apples and gardens and the feeling of falling. Not falling with a capital F, mind you. A simpler kind. 

Freddie nods. “Well, think about what I said, Crowley. And do visit me again sometime, it’s been lovely.”

(It feels too much like a goodbye. The next day dawns bright and chilly, November trees stripped bare and quivering in anticipation of the winter. Crowley doesn’t need to see the headlines to know that Freddie Mercury is dead.)

**Author's Note:**

> \- oh god i really need to edit this but i also really needed to just publish it  
\- i did some basic research into the timeline and other details, correct me if i'm wrong  
\- the live aid scene was inspired by bohemian rhapsody because i thought it would be fitting but i don't know if it's a thing that actually happened?  
\- this isn't a speculation on or in any way related to the actual historical figure freddie mercury—for all intents and purposes this is a made-up version of him specifically for my fic
> 
> tumblr: @doctortwelfth


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